Why you want to know about the painted lorries in India.

Horn Please Okay

Regular

How women exploring holistic health treatments being dubbed as witchcraft.

Witch, Please

How deeply entrenched social norms can mean silence for women.

Adjusting for the Unjust

Improving voter access with community engagement and the Harris County Clerk's Office

Vote Your Way campaign

Harris County wants you to Vote Your Way and so do we.

What the history of hues can teach us about gender in 2020

The Secret Lives of Color

Family Matters

Why your truth trumps relatability any day

Be Specific

Why your brand needs a purpose, a personality and a point of view to live in the real world

Branding Like You Mean It

We support Houston women: a map to March On all year long 

The rush and feeling of community empowerment from walking with Houston Women March On* is still going strong in our office.

We support Houston women: a map to March On all year long

Condensed

Black Sheep’s interview with Minal Patel Davis, Special Advisor to the Houston Mayor's Office on Human Trafficking

A Hidden Crime

An Exploration of Meme Culture, History and Influence

Here for the Lols

We’re hiring for a Concierge/Task Master/Office Parent/General Getter of Things Done. And, hey, you can even help us pick your title.

Are you the match we're missing?

We are no longer accepting applications, but want to stay connected! Sign up for our newsletter or send us a note to be the first to know when we're hiring. 

Are you the match we're missing? (CLOSED)

A look at how pervasive design bias just might be killing us

Death by default

A Decade of Discourse: Our Best Blogs from the First 10 Years

A list of our top 10 best blogs over the last decade.

Everyone loves to count backwards from 10. The growing volume of the crowd. The anticipation. The promise of something unmissable at the end. And whether it’s a rocket launch or the clock ticking its way into a new year, hitting zero is always exhilarating.

Hello, World. Here are our newest Black Sheep.

Hey there. These are our newest Black Sheep.

Being black and loving your natural hair.

Our Crown and Glory

Inspo: Why You Should Read Children's Books

A tidbit about a super small book you should definitely buy and read

Why you should read children's books

What do turtles eat

A Digital Treatise on #NeverEverEverEndingGivingTuesday

The Black Sheep Agency Manifesto

The Change You Can Make with 10

This technology affects humans, what to know in 2020

Tech updates like “Meat Made Out of Air”, “DNA Warrants” and Other Things

Meat Made Out of Air, DNA Warrants and Other Things 

There’s a particular kind of project that doesn’t feel like a project.

It feels like something else entirely. Over Black Sheep’s 16 years, we’ve learned to recognize these engagements — the ones where the stakes are real, where the mission is load-bearing, where getting the story right genuinely changes what’s possible for the people an organization serves. We’ve also learned that these are the projects we want to fill our days with.

Right now, our roster is full of them. I want to talk about that — not as a highlight reel, but as a reflection of what we believe this work is for. And if you’re leading one of these organizations right now and it feels heavy or uncertain or like your story isn’t keeping pace with your mission, this is for you too.


Some projects aren’t a single scope — they’re a relationship, built over time, through the kind of trust that only comes from doing hard things together.

Houston Arts Alliance is in one of the most pivotal moments in its history. A new CEO — the first woman and person of color to lead the organization — has stepped into a role that carries both enormous expectation and extraordinary possibility. We are building alongside them from the ground up: immediate messaging and leadership transition tools, a mission and vision refresh, a public education campaign, a community engagement process and a full brand foundation. Long, layered, listening-first work. Some of our favorite kind.

Houston Parks Board is marking its 50th anniversary at the start of an exciting new chapter — bold new leadership, a visionary strategic plan and a future that has been a century in the making. We’re evolving their brand to match the scale of that moment. Being trusted when the foundation is strong and the future is wide open is its own kind of honor.

Good Reason Houston is an organization we know well — we built their original brand in 2018, and they’ve called on us at several points of strategic inflection since. This is one of those moments. The world these leaders are navigating looks almost nothing like it did seven years ago, and our work together right now is about finding language that tells their story with clarity and confidence for where things are today.

Civic Builders designs, finances and builds educational facilities in underserved communities across the country. We completed a full messaging and positioning strategy with them, and we’re now deep into their visual identity system — in genuine collaboration with their extraordinary internal team. This partnership is the kind we aspire to: the work belongs to all of us.

The Greater Houston Partnership is building an AI-powered tool to connect educators, employers and community partners in ways that expand workforce opportunity. We’re building the brand that makes it accessible and credible from day one.

Fervo Energy is redefining what clean energy looks like. We are their strategic design agency — giving visual and creative form to the complexity of what they’re building, because a breakthrough technology deserves a story told with equal craft.

The University of Nevada, Reno trusted us to direct a digital campaign for their Black Youth Mental Health Initiative — designed to reach young people at the right moment, in the right channels and keep them connected to support that can change the trajectory of their lives. This follows our branding and strategy work for their CDC-sponsored Safer Nights opioid overdose prevention campaign last year.

The Center for Civic and Tech Life is now publishing a magazine for local election officials — the people who make democracy function at the ground level. We named and developed the publication’s visual identity, because this community deserves tools that reflect the seriousness of their work.

In collaboration with January Advisors, we’re working with the League of Women Voters Houston on a set of core values and a strategic plan built for what comes next. The League has been doing this work longer than most organizations have existed. Helping them articulate where they’re headed is not something we take lightly.

Much of this work is happening in Houston — the city where Black Sheep was founded, where many of us live and where we feel the stakes of these institutions personally. When you’re a Houstonian working on Houston, it stops being a client list and starts being something else.

It takes something to make this call. The leaders we work with aren’t doing it because things are easy — they’re doing it because they’ve decided that a story that can’t carry the mission is a liability they can’t afford. That takes clarity about what’s actually at stake. It takes a willingness to look honestly at the gap between where you are and how you’re being perceived. And it takes the kind of courage that doesn’t always get named as courage — the quiet decision to invest in something foundational when there are a hundred urgent things competing for the same resources.

But the thread running through all of it — local and national — is the same: find the organizations doing the most necessary work, and make sure their story is strong enough to carry their mission forward.

If your organization is in a moment that demands more clarity, more confidence or a story that finally matches where you’re headed — we’d love to be in that room with you.

A reflection on 16 years of learning which projects are worth our days — and the mission-driven organizations we're building alongside right now.

The Work That Doesn't Feel Like Work | Black Sheep Agency

What it takes to build a story strong enough to carry a mission forward.

A reflection on the partnerships filling our roster right now — and what it takes for mission-driven organizations to build a story strong enough to carry their work forward.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

We like to type as much as we like to listen.

We're not shy.

The Work That Doesn’t Feel Like Work

Horn Please Okay

Witch, Please.

Adjusting for the Unjust

Vote here. Vote there. Just vote!

The Secret Lives of Color

Be Specific

Branding Like You Mean It

We support Houston women: a map to March On all year long

A Hidden Crime

Here for the Lols

Are you the match we're missing? (CLOSED)

Death by Default

A Decade of Discourse: Our Best Blogs from the First 10 Years

Hello, World. Here are our newest Black Sheep.

Our Crown and Glory

Why You Should Read Children's Books

What Do Turtles Eat?

A Digital Treatise on #GivingTuesday

The Change You Can Make with 10

What To Know About Technology Right Now